That Whiter Host in Lonesome Place
by Belladonna Lee
Summary: Draco/Harry. In the blue twilight of the long polar night, Harry stands at the edge of the snow-shrouded forest and at the edge of reason. There is nothing and no one tethering him to reality—no one but Draco.


Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and its characters are not mine.

A/N: Revised as of October 21st, 2019. The story title is derived from Emily Dickinson's poem, "One need not be a chamber to be haunted."

 **That Whiter Host in Lonesome Place**

 _Part I_

Smoke rose from the stone chimney of a handsome log house and dissipated into the polar night sky. A dozen paces away from the house, a forest of snow-shrouded pine trees loomed like a wall in the blue twilight. Dressed in a thick winter coat and fur-lined boots, Harry stood in the trampled snow and inhaled deeply. Smelling of firewood smoke and fresh snow, the cold Nordic air burnt his lungs and chased away his ennui.

It was Draco's idea to travel, but it was Harry himself who suggested they go somewhere north and remote. Ever since he came here, he had lost all sense of time. In the long polar night of Northern Finland, day and night bled into one another without a defining line, and it made no difference to him whether it was morning or evening. Like an animal he was ruled by the primal desires for food, water, warmth, sleep and sex. Draco, on the other hand, fared better than he did and was the one holding everything together.

Harry strolled to the edge of the forest and looked back. Golden fairy lights traced the contour of the house: the triangular roof, the two vertical lines that made up the side walls, and the horizontal outline of the wooden porch. Lamps were lit behind closed windows; a wreath of red holly and evergreen adorned the front door. From a distance, the scene resembled a child's vision of a traditional Christmas cabin.

" _Your_ vision, you mean," Draco would have said to him in that drawling voice of his. The notion made Harry smile; his inner voice was beginning to sound a lot like Draco.

Turning away from the house and the lights, Harry peered into the blue depth of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement amongst the trees. His heart skipped a beat. Something in the scenery seemed to shift ever so slightly, but all he could see were twigs and needles and snow and shadows. There was no sound; even the shuffling of his feet was muted by the snow.

It was probably nothing: a small animal, the wind, a trick of the light, an illusion sprung from his vivid imagination. He could not quite convince himself of it. There was a tingling in his spine and a fluttering in his abdomen, not of dread but of anticipation. As he squinted at the snowy forest, he thought of another forest from another lifetime: dark, shadowy, lush with spring green and smelling of damp. He remembered the resignation, the helplessness, the terrible loneliness and the morbid relief that it would be over soon.

Something emerged from the sea of trees without a sound and revealed itself to him. Even before Harry locked eyes with it, he already knew what he would see. A ghostly white stag reared its head towards his direction and stared at him with blank, milky eyes—eyes of the dead. Its antlers, magnificent and deadly, were white as snow.

For a long time Harry stared at the stag, his mind empty, his heart stone cold and his body frozen to the core. And the stag stared back, silent and still, as if it had all the time in the world.

"You are going to freeze to that spot if you stand there any longer."

Harry blinked, and the spell was broken. After giving him one last look, the stag turned around and retraced its path back into the deep of the forest. As if echoing the stag's silent steps, the sound of boots crunching snow came ever closer behind him and soon stopped. Woken from his trance, Harry let out a misty breath, and he turned towards the fairy lights and the log house and the certain someone who was watching him in silence.

Even though it was barely a dozen steps away from the house, Draco was armed from head to toe against the Nordic chill. Wrapped in a thick black winter coat, he had pulled the fur-trimmed hood over his head. Against the backdrop of a house lit by warm lights, his silhouette resembled a brown bear. Harry was reminded of the tale of the cursed bear prince, who, under the cover of darkness, would shed his fur every night and join his bride in bed as a man.

"You can come help me unfreeze," Harry joked before spreading his arms in invitation. His legs trembled ever so slightly in the cold; his fingertips felt numb beneath his gloves.

Heaving a white sigh, Draco closed the space between them, wrapped his arms around Harry, and without ceremony lifted Harry off the ground. Losing his balance, Harry let out an undignified sound in protest and hung onto Draco for dear life. A beat or two later, Draco lowered him to the ground and breathed a sigh of relief.

"I can't carry you back to the house," Draco said in half-jest, his arms hanging loosely around Harry's waist still. "You'll have to use your wand or your legs."

"Well, at least my feet aren't stuck in the snow anymore," Harry remarked in a playful tone, all the while holding onto Draco's shoulders and not wanting to let go, as if letting go of Draco meant letting go of reality. "You know, for a moment there I felt like a bear was hugging me."

There was a quirk of a smile upon Draco's lips. "Oh? And how do you know what it's like to be hugged by a bear?"

Harry flashed Draco a smile of his own. "I'll leave that to your imagination." For a heartbeat or two he contemplated Draco's face: pale skin tinted with twilight blue, a pallor not unlike the snow blanketing the ground. "Hmm, you are the most good-looking bear prince I've ever met."

"Have you been taking a nip from the bottle? Or are you running a fever?" Those slate grey eyes of Draco's were fixed upon Harry, searching and scrutinising. Harry felt naked, exposed, but it was not an uncomfortable feeling—so long as it was Draco's gaze he was subjected to. "You are shaking," Draco observed, his brow knitted.

"I might have been out here for too long." Harry admitted.

Pregnant silence stretched on for a beat or two before Draco let out a misty breath. "And I don't feel like thawing an ice man in my bed tonight. Come on."

Without another word Draco took Harry's hand and steered him away from the forest and towards the house. Harry did not resist, and he did not look over his shoulder to see if the stag was watching him from the shadows of the trees.

* * *

 _To be continued..._

A/N: The bear prince Harry mentioned in the story appears in "East of the Sun and West of the Moon", "The Brown Bear of Norway" and other similar fairy tales. Thank you for reading.


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